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What We Learned From Prince Harry's Most Honest Interview Ever

PRINCE HARRY has given a moving and frank interview about how failing to address his feelings following the death of his mother while navigating life in the public eye left him "very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions". The Prince - who founded Heads Together with his brother, Prince William, and sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge - spoke candidly about how, after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, he entered two decades during which his failure to talk about her loss impacted every area of his life.

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"I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well," he told The Telegraph. "My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum, because why would that help? I thought, it’s only going to make you sad, it’s not going to bring her back. So from an emotional side, I was like ‘Right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything.' So I was a typical 20, 25, 28-year-old running around going ‘Life is great’, or ‘Life is fine’ and that was exactly it. And then I started to have a few conversations and actually all of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront and I was like, there is actually a lot of stuff here that I need to deal with."

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Prince Harry revealed that it was his brother, Prince William, who was a "huge support" and who motivated him to seek help, telling him: "Look, you really need to deal with this. It is not normal to think that nothing has affected you."

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As well as working with professional counsellors to begin dealing with what had happened to his family, he also threw himself into sport.

"During those years I took up boxing, because everyone was saying boxing is good for you and it’s a really good way of letting out aggression," he said. "And that really saved me because I was on the verge of punching someone, so being able to punch someone who had pads was certainly easier."

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Although the Prince admitted he was nervous about the interview, he reiterated that breaking down the boundaries that exist to have frank conversations about mental health is the only way forward.

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"What we are trying to do is normalise the conversation to the point where anyone can sit down and have a coffee and just go ‘You know what, I’ve had a really shit day, can I just tell you about it?' Because then you walk away and it’s done," he said. "Because of the process I have been through over the past two and a half years, I’ve now been able to take my work seriously, been able to take my private life seriously as well, and been able to put blood, sweat and tears into the things that really make a difference and things that I think will make a difference to everybody else."